Description
Invitation Homes is a public company traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: INVH). It is headquartered in the Comerica Bank Tower in Dallas, Texas. Dallas B. Tanner serves as chief executive officer. As of 2017, the company was reportedly the largest owner of single-family rental homes in the United States. As of September 2020, the company owned about 80,000 rental homes in 16 markets.
History
2005–2012: Background and formation
In 2005, entrepreneur Dallas Tanner and several others formed the housing and apartment investment company Treehouse Group in Arizona. Between 2010 and 2011, it bought 1,000 distressed houses in Phoenix, Arizona, a city heavily impacted by foreclosures caused by the subprime mortgage crisis and one of the first areas where private equity investor purchases of homes for rent took place after the Great Recession.
In 2011, Treehouse merged with the Dallas-based property management firm Riverstone Residential. The company was acquired by Blackstone in the spring of 2012, forming Invitation Homes, with Blackstone giving Treehouse and Residential more capital to expand the business.
2012–2017: Initial purchases
Invitation Homes' first home purchase was in April 2012, and within a year the company had spent $4 billion on 24,000 homes in the United States, becoming the largest buyer of homes for rent in the United States; section 8 properties made up 16% of the portfolio. In April 2013, it made a $100-million-plus purchase of 1,400 Atlanta homes from Building and Land Technology.
From August 2012 to June 2013, Invitation Homes purchased 1,650 homes in the Tampa Bay Area for over $250 million. In June, 85% of Tampa Bay online listings by Invitation Homes were above the area's average rent of $1,200.
At the time, corporate home owners like Invitation Homes were purchasing houses in "strike zones," neighborhoods located near several jobs, schools, and transportation systems that were also facing high amounts of foreclosures, and rented them to middle-aged parents raising children making around $100,000 a year or more.
In 2013, Invitation Homes created an asset class of single-family rental securities (SFR) to raise money for purchasing and restoring houses.
In 2016, Invitation Homes instituted its "Resident First Look" program where some renters would be given an option to purchase the homes they rent.
2017–present: Initial public offering and merger
By January 2017, nearly $10 billion of the company's SFR bonds were sold a number that went to $15 billion in July 2018. On January 23, 2017, Fannie Mae funded $1 billion of debt to Invitation Homes as back-up money; four years prior, Fannie stopped another government-sponsored entity buying distressed homes, and Fannie's acquisition with the Blackstone entity was the first time in history it backstopped a single-family house landlord company. According to Corinne Russell, spokesperson of Fannie Mae regulator Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the deal was a way for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to learn about the mechanics of the single-family rent market and what the government enterprises' role should be in it. The decision received criticism from more than 25 affordable-housing advocate groups, who believed Fannie Mae wasn't following its principle of protecting home owners. In February, Invitation Homes became a public company via an initial public offering, the second-largest initial public offering of a real estate investment trust in the United States with $1.77 billion. In November, the company merged with Starwood Waypoint, a corporate spin-off of Starwood Capital Group.
In November 2019, Blackstone divested its share of Invitation Homes.
In October 2020, Invitation Homes created a joint venture with Rockpoint Group to purchase $1 billion in single-family homes in Dallas, Seattle, South Florida and other U.S. markets.
In July 2021, the company launched a joint venture with Atlanta, Georgia-based home construction company PulteGroup, where Pulte was projected to design and build approximately 7,500 new homes over the next five years for sale to Invitation Homes for inclusion in their single-family rental leasing portfolio.
